


Four A.M.

by roseluu



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1918, Estonia-Centric, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 06:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15966629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseluu/pseuds/roseluu
Summary: Toris has left, and everything seems quiet.





	Four A.M.

There’s an empty spot on their bed.

That’s what is making him writhe, and twist, and rub his eyes at his clock. There are several sleepless nights these days. They creep in while he closes his eyes when the sun falls, and they crawl up his throat in the early hours of the morning, waking him from some dream of some event of some time.

Raivis has his days. Complete nights without sleep, shaking next to him, nails digging into Eduard’s arms when he hears the wind whistle, a door open, or footsteps. He wonders if it’s because he wishes for it to all whisk away, or for someone to open the door and take up the empty spot in their bed neither of them touches.

This spot was closest to the door, always awake. Ready for anyone, ready for them both. It’s been this way for centuries, and now it seems the spot has fallen into a deep sleep, never to wake, never to pull up a shield, never to breathe again.

Ivan doesn’t sleep.

He paces, he clatters around the kitchen at midnight. One, two, three, in sporadic patterns – like making music, or trying to replicate something – and it goes on until nearly four a.m. Then the grand hallway cabinets open, glasses clink, and his study closes, quiet.

There’s something missing (why does he think this way, nothing about this should need to have something missing), and it leaves a gloss in the air. Raivis has never been _quiet_ , per say. He chatters when nervous, rambles off whatever clanks in the forefront of his mind, spills words in phrases that mix their languages. When he isn’t nervous, he’s already teetering on the edge of nervous, so he doesn’t say much.

Eduard isn’t much for small talk, damn him, and he’s never been one – or young-minded enough – to spit out the certainties he thinks. But he’s never seen Ivan this quiet, and it’s what Ivan doesn’t say – doesn’t do – that scares him.

He hasn’t heard more than a word from him in weeks now. And, weeks – years – pass by in a blink of an eye for his kind, so he’s leaning on how slow everything has become, yet how hazy.

Time seems strange now – when has it not? – but he can’t help but think Toris had been much, much too loud before he’d left. Even when he’d been caught squeezing through windows, dragged from the forest, rushed to leaders by Ivan’s side. Even when Ivan had been giving him these _looks_ , these different looks. Looks, Toris said, that had been there for a very long time, long before them. Even when his people screamed through his head. When they did that, Toris got this air around him, and he became louder, stiffer, angrier. Toris is not an angry man, not the Toris he knows.

But, hell, because of Toris, his head rattles all through the night, and it’s not just because of the quiet dip on the bed.

He’s giving his time to Raivis before he does this.

God. _God_. He hopes to never see his brothers again, not in this house. Not so quiet.


End file.
